Email errors in a asp.net mvc application

Question

Is there a single place where I can track any uncaught exceptions in a asp.net mvc application?

I want to email the error, or write to a file/db.

Answer 1

For any logging / mailing / whatever you want to do when an exception occurs, you should have a look at the application health configuration (described here) in the Web.config file.

In your case (send a mail when an exception occurs), you would use the SimpleMailWebEventProvider provider with the predefined "All Errors" event, like in this exemple :

<healthMonitoring enabled="false" heartbeatInterval="0">
  <providers>
    <add name="notifyAppDev" type="System.Web.Management.SimpleMailWebEventProvider" to="[email protected]" from="[email protected]" subjectPrefix="[WebEvent Error My Site Blabla]" buffer="false" />
  </providers>
  <rules>
    <add name="appDevEvents" eventName="All Errors" provider="notifyAppDev" profile="Critical" minInstances="1" maxLimit="Infinite" minInterval="00:01:00" custom="" />
  </rules>
</healthMonitoring>

Oh and if you want to use this method don't forget to configure the SMTP server from which the mails will be sent, in the Web.config file.

Answer 2

I recommend ELMAH. There are a number of blog posts on how to incorporate it into your mvc application. The most convenient is to use a filter, as described here: http://www.codecapers.com/post/Error-Handling-in-MVC-with-ELMAH.aspx